[d&d4e] Puzzles in RPGs
Callan S.:
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Kind of? It's not moral, it's purpose. The reason that I am running a RPG is for player and personal enjoyment. If I have reason to believe that something will take away from that enjoyment, then I 'should' not use it. Words like 'should' or 'bad' or 'good' only have meaning when attached to a purpose or goal, but don't we have one assumed? I didn't think this needed to be explicitly stated.
Well, I think it does, since it doesn't seem achievable. There will be something that you enjoy but the players don't (here I'm pretty certain Chronoplasm likes his boat puzzle, otherwise he wouldn't have made it). Water it down and your taking away your own enjoyment (because it's watered down - you would have done that already if you enjoyed it), which you 'should' not do. Don't water it down and your taking away the players enjoyment, which you 'should' not do. Cue an Asimov three laws of robotics type internal conflict!
There are plenty of activities and products in the world which have not been tailored to the people who are the players - they cope in that world, presumably. So I think that goal does need to be explicitly stated.
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and if it's well designed some (subtle) clues on the enemy's preferences should be discoverable/have already been revealed.
I'm still seeing this as taking away what is already a good puzzle, then handballing back the actual vital part of making another one. If it's well designed? Weren't you going to design that? And I'm not sure I even get the black portal as a puzzle - what's to solve?
Maybe it's early in the piece to judge, but so far you haven't provided a substitute and these things you say you should not do have taken away material (if followed). They don't seem productive rules on what one shouldn't do. Again, early in the piece to judge, but I suspect it'll be a trend.
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They don't sound impressive, but the uncertainty gives a tension that a puzzle with only 100% right/wrong answers can't.
I think this is drifting over from challenge and into a 'certain feel'.
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Darts could work for this, but I think the more traditional method is just to make a skill roll, with difficulty based on how practical the idea is.
I think you've missed the key elements/reversals - the player calls the distance/difficulty himself/level of esteem himself, and it's an act of skill on his part to hit with a dart, his own skill, which is supposedly also coming up with a good idea. While no one can have skill at rolling dice and thus they can complain that they and their idea was brilliant and the dice were just against them. Rather than taking in any sense of humility that hey, if they aren't that good at throwing a dart, perhaps they aren't that good at making up a successful idea?
And it doesn't answer my critique - I've just made up another boat puzzle, essentially. I've coupled an imaginative spectrum to a real life life task just as much as the boat puzzle is a real life task. What I've made is rules first - what I critiqued was fiction first. It's not another 'oh, if the fiction seems to call for a dice roll, then we will roll - though if that roll stuffs up the fiction, clearly the fiction is in charge and thus we'll work out some way of ignoring the roll...' fiction first fest.
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what's important isn't that you're mirroring reality, but that you're mirroring the mood-based decisions you've already made within the game. Letting the parachute pants succeed in a game all about gritty realism wouldn't work, while not letting it succeed in a game where you already let someone fly by flapping their arms really hard also wouldn't work.
And you wonder why I think your talking about simulationism first and foremost? Your almost shouting that the package decides if something is hard or not - rather than someone at the table simply deciding they want to present something that's hard.
Basically anyone diciding something that goes against the 'mood' is athenema to you, right? That's why I call your ideas sim or religion even, because you can't simply decide as your own man to present a hard game, you can only present whatever it is that the mood tells you you are allowed to present. Your a follower of that mood. Ignoring my comments on sim or religion for now, everything I've said is based on deciding what you do as your own man, not as a follower.
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The thing that separates RPGs from other types of games is that it's the only system that uses the human brain as the processor to determine what does or doesn't happen, and if you just dismiss things like estimation of if an idea is feasible or not as 'just bullshitting', then why are you even into RPGs as opposed to any other kind of game?
This is a bit like asking how someone can enjoy wrestling if they don't believe it's real.
Someone on this forum once gave the example of a general from hundreds of years ago who would, outside of battle, present imaginary attacks from various hills or terrain around him, to his collegues. Basically to brainstorm ideas. I don't imagine he thought his solutions would win, because such hubris would probably have killed him off earlier. But instead he worked on solutions in advance of the problem showing up, so he'd have some plans to consider if it ever came up instead of it suddenly happening and coming up a blank. Maybe he'd use none of the stuff he made up, but atleast he'd have more resources to draw on when the real life moment hit. He was preparing for life, he was not sinking (immersing?) into a fantasy. And I'm pretty sure Ron's spione is trying in some way to prepare for real life, as well. But that's nar, of course.
But I'm probably stuck in something similar to trying to describe an enjoyment that comes from not thinking it's real, to someone who does think it's real.
otspiii:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 04, 2009, 03:45:18 PM
Well, I think it does, since it doesn't seem achievable. There will be something that you enjoy but the players don't (here I'm pretty certain Chronoplasm likes his boat puzzle, otherwise he wouldn't have made it). Water it down and your taking away your own enjoyment (because it's watered down - you would have done that already if you enjoyed it), which you 'should' not do. Don't water it down and your taking away the players enjoyment, which you 'should' not do. Cue an Asimov three laws of robotics type internal conflict!
There are plenty of activities and products in the world which have not been tailored to the people who are the players - they cope in that world, presumably. So I think that goal does need to be explicitly stated.
I. . .what? So, if enjoyment isn't your goal, what is? I understand that infinite enjoyment for all people involved isn't possible, but that doesn't mean that maximum enjoyment isn't a good goal. Different people can even have different weights attached to how important the GM enjoyment vs. the average player enjoyment vs. a specific player's enjoyment is, but how could it not be your primary goal in making a game? Even if it's something like 'improve yourself' I really don't see darts or solving artificial computational puzzles as more useful in everyday life than practicing creative problem solving, even practicing it on artificial problems, and if the game isn't enjoyable people aren't going to play it long enough to improve themselves anyway.
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Maybe it's early in the piece to judge, but so far you haven't provided a substitute and these things you say you should not do have taken away material (if followed). They don't seem productive rules on what one shouldn't do. Again, early in the piece to judge, but I suspect it'll be a trend.
Are you saying that I've given rules on an alternative, but not given any good reason why you shouldn't use the boat puzzle? Your words tend to the vague sometimes and I don't want to misunderstand you.
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I think this is drifting over from challenge and into a 'certain feel'.
And it doesn't answer my critique - I've just made up another boat puzzle, essentially. I've coupled an imaginative spectrum to a real life life task just as much as the boat puzzle is a real life task. What I've made is rules first - what I critiqued was fiction first. It's not another 'oh, if the fiction seems to call for a dice roll, then we will roll - though if that roll stuffs up the fiction, clearly the fiction is in charge and thus we'll work out some way of ignoring the roll...' fiction first fest.
What? Where did I ever say anything about ignoring the roll? It's all about positioning yourself for maximum advantage before the roll, but when the roll happens it happens. Do you just believe challenge is not possible without a pre-imagined answer? Just because the GM has to judge the merit of a solution doesn't mean that it's suddenly all holding hands and telling each other how smart we all are. Judgment calls like that are impossible not to have in an RPG, and if you're not comfortable with that then why are you even roleplaying as opposed to any other sort of game? Just because a rule is being channeled and interpreted through the GM mind doesn't mean it's not a rule.
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And you wonder why I think your talking about simulationism first and foremost? Your almost shouting that the package decides if something is hard or not - rather than someone at the table simply deciding they want to present something that's hard.
Basically anyone diciding something that goes against the 'mood' is athenema to you, right? That's why I call your ideas sim or religion even, because you can't simply decide as your own man to present a hard game, you can only present whatever it is that the mood tells you you are allowed to present. Your a follower of that mood. Ignoring my comments on sim or religion for now, everything I've said is based on deciding what you do as your own man, not as a follower.
The mood isn't a Sim thing, it's impossible not to have in any form of game, story, art, whatever. It's the type of challenge in a game, it's the themes and emotional tone of a narrative, it's the way that you feel (or, the way the artist is trying to make you feel, at least) when you experience a piece of art. How is this so alien to you? An RPG should have a way that it tries to make the people who play it feel, a mood it wants to give them, and that mood can be absolutely any creative agenda. If you just go 'oh, challenge is challenge, I'll toss in whatever I feel like as long as it's difficult and if they don't like it's because they're not True Gamists' you're designing with a blindfold and a hammer, using theory as a way to ignore rather than explore reality.
And how the hell does creating a goal for myself and following it make me a follower? What the hell does that even mean? I could understand if it was following someone else's lead, but I'm not. I'm following my own. Is the only way not to be a follower to just wander blindly? I have a type of experience I want to provide the players, a certain kind of challenge, and I want to do things primarily that enhance that type of experience. Yes, I am following that goal, but how the hell does following my own lead make me a religious follower? If following design goals makes me a package-worshiper, then the definition of 'package' you're using is far too broad to be useful.
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Someone on this forum once gave the example of a general from hundreds of years ago who would, outside of battle, present imaginary attacks from various hills or terrain around him, to his collegues. Basically to brainstorm ideas. I don't imagine he thought his solutions would win, because such hubris would probably have killed him off earlier. But instead he worked on solutions in advance of the problem showing up, so he'd have some plans to consider if it ever came up instead of it suddenly happening and coming up a blank. Maybe he'd use none of the stuff he made up, but atleast he'd have more resources to draw on when the real life moment hit. He was preparing for life, he was not sinking (immersing?) into a fantasy. And I'm pretty sure Ron's spione is trying in some way to prepare for real life, as well. But that's nar, of course.
But I'm probably stuck in something similar to trying to describe an enjoyment that comes from not thinking it's real, to someone who does think it's real.
But. . .that's exactly the type of challenge I'm talking about. He took an abstract situation with no set answer and tried to determine how likely it was for a certain answer to the situation to lead to success. It wasn't a puzzle with an absolute correct answer, like what you've been talking about, but a situation that he had to feel his way through based on past experience and his own judgment. And yes, I agree that that form of problem-solving does a lot more to help you prepare for life than learning how to better throw darts or solve boat puzzles, even if the exact situations you come up with probably won't come up and it would be hubris to assume that your solutions would automatically succeed.
The only difference between what I'm suggesting and what he did was that he would think up 'okay, if I did this how likely would I be to win the battle?' while I'm suggesting that after you assign a likelihood you roll a dice to find out what the actual outcome in the game is.
Callan S.:
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Different people can even have different weights attached to how important the GM enjoyment vs. the average player enjoyment vs. a specific player's enjoyment is
Can we wrap up why I brought this up? You've been saying what people 'should' do - given other people have different weights, as you say, perhaps you should (oops, there I go as well) be instead outlining your set of weights and the value you see in that set, rather than saying what they 'should' do. That's what I've been getting at.
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Even if it's something like 'improve yourself' I really don't see darts or solving artificial computational puzzles as more useful in everyday life than practicing creative problem solving
You enquired about my posts and I tried to describe them further. If you don't see it - to try and go any further would involve trying to convince you. And I only set out to describe my posts further.
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Are you saying that I've given rules on an alternative, but not given any good reason why you shouldn't use the boat puzzle?
No, I've said you've dismissed the boat puzzle but offered no replacement.
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What? Where did I ever say anything about ignoring the roll? It's all about positioning yourself for maximum advantage before the roll, but when the roll happens it happens. Do you just believe challenge is not possible without a pre-imagined answer? Just because the GM has to judge the merit of a solution doesn't mean that it's suddenly all holding hands and telling each other how smart we all are. Judgment calls like that are impossible not to have in an RPG, and if you're not comfortable with that then why are you even roleplaying as opposed to any other sort of game? Just because a rule is being channeled and interpreted through the GM mind doesn't mean it's not a rule.
I think here and further down your mostly telling me 'how it is', rather than asking for further information about my posts. I'm just describing my perspective rather than trying to justify how it clashes with your perspective.
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But. . .that's exactly the type of challenge I'm talking about. He took an abstract situation with no set answer and tried to determine how likely it was for a certain answer to the situation to lead to success.
For the guy I described, no, he didn't decide how likely a certain answer would lead to success. He looked at actions he could take.
This never has a correct answer (until the actual RL moment comes) - it's just making up potential actions. That's why the boat puzzle is part of play, because you can actually win at that.
I made a game based on this years ago - any set of actions described would do, but the more props (provided by a random generator) you included in the solution, the more points you get. The difficulty was in using all the props, while the solution wasn't judged by any other person at all as to whether it'd 'work' or 'be successful'.
To further describe my perspective (without justifying how it might clash with any other perspective), I think judging whether the actions would be successful is rather like Richard Dawkins 'orbiting teapot' criticism. That criticism of imagined assertions being that there's a teapot orbiting the sun, but it's too small to be seen with telescopes. Can you disprove it's there? No. So if you can't prove it doesn't exist, does that prove the teapot does exist? No, of course not. Same with judging whether the parachute jacket would work under a certain 'mood' - can anyone prove it wouldn't work? No...so does that prove it would work? The capacity for groups to be convinced it would work, especially if their prized PC's life is at risk, is amazing - when really it's neither proved nor disproved. It's just in limbo. It's not that the human mind is good at judging abstract situations, it's that the human mind is good at jumping to conclusions where none can be made.
otspiii:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 05, 2009, 03:59:16 PM
Can we wrap up why I brought this up? You've been saying what people 'should' do - given other people have different weights, as you say, perhaps you should (oops, there I go as well) be instead outlining your set of weights and the value you see in that set, rather than saying what they 'should' do. That's what I've been getting at.
And my point was that no matter how you weigh those things, the things I say you 'should' do mostly add to all of them. The only one they might not with is 'GM happiness', but any GM that's the primary goal for is probably not going to be enjoyable to play with at all.
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You enquired about my posts and I tried to describe them further. If you don't see it - to try and go any further would involve trying to convince you. And I only set out to describe my posts further.
I don't get into discussions not to be convinced. If I'm arguing styles or opinions with you it's because I think you have an interesting idea and I think that there's a chance that I'll agree with it once it's fully described. If I press on you and tell you there are things wrong with your assertions it's to make sure I don't get a half-assed explanation.
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No, I've said you've dismissed the boat puzzle but offered no replacement.
What? I offered the Situation as an alternative to the Puzzle. My whole point was that things that you need to find the one correct answer to work less well in D&D than situations that have to be understood and used creatively to profit from/avoid damage from. I even offered examples of what I'm talking about from earlier in the thread: blood, sarcophagus, orb. Those three are all fairly different, but all are more or less what I'm talking about.
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I think here and further down your mostly telling me 'how it is', rather than asking for further information about my posts. I'm just describing my perspective rather than trying to justify how it clashes with your perspective.
I am attacking your perspective, but it's not to 'educate' you or anything dumb like that. I just want you to explain yourself, and I'm putting pressure on the weak points of your explanation in hopes that you'll justify them. The fact that you seem incapable of telling the difference between different types of challenge Gamism, just assuming that if a person likes Gamism they'll like any type of challenge, is one of those weaknesses. You have already given me a good deal to think about, and I appreciate that, but your last few posts have felt more like evasion and accusation than explanation. Accusation of accusation. I am listening to you, I promise.
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For the guy I described, no, he didn't decide how likely a certain answer would lead to success. He looked at actions he could take.
And presumably weighed their expected effectiveness? He probably didn't assign a numeric ranking system, but if he wasn't on some level judging the effectivenesses of the various actions he could have taken he would have had no reason to do any of this in the first place.
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To further describe my perspective (without justifying how it might clash with any other perspective), I think judging whether the actions would be successful is rather like Richard Dawkins 'orbiting teapot' criticism. That criticism of imagined assertions being that there's a teapot orbiting the sun, but it's too small to be seen with telescopes. Can you disprove it's there? No. So if you can't prove it doesn't exist, does that prove the teapot does exist? No, of course not. Same with judging whether the parachute jacket would work under a certain 'mood' - can anyone prove it wouldn't work? No...so does that prove it would work? The capacity for groups to be convinced it would work, especially if their prized PC's life is at risk, is amazing - when really it's neither proved nor disproved. It's just in limbo. It's not that the human mind is good at judging abstract situations, it's that the human mind is good at jumping to conclusions where none can be made.
That's why you assign a single person to arbitrate all this, the GM, who isn't the owner of any of the 'prized PCs'. It's not about proof, it's about judgment calls. Are you uncomfortable with having a person be the arbiter of reality rather than reality itself? It can certainly be abused and misdone, but common sense, although insufficient for science, usually works just fine for gaming. If this is something you can't accept, though, this issue goes way beyond puzzles and into the basic concept of what RPGs are. In any interaction that isn't purely mechanical, there will always be that arbitrary decision that has to be made. RPGs thrive on those arbitrary decisions, though. They're what RPGs do better than board, video, and war games.
And besides, you're not deciding if the teapot exists or not, you're deciding on what the odds are that the teapot exists. Reality is dictated by the dice in cases where there is uncertainty, the GM just gives the odds.
Callan S.:
Misha, I think you making multiple assertions which you are certain are true, then your telling me to prove my assertions in light of yours - as if only my assertions could be flawed and they have to fit in with your assertions which are apparently 'true'. I really don't see any nod from you toward the idea that your own assertions could be just as flawed in themselves as you think mine are, all I see is you telling me RPG's are this, or RPG's are that, with a fervor. Have you spent time, even just thirty seconds, trying to think of ways that your assertions are wrong? It's okay if you did but couldn't find any, because atleast that's trying - the thing is, alot of people fall into confirmation bias, where they will form a hypothesis and only ever look for evidence that proves it, and never try to disprove their own hypothesis. How much time have you spent trying to disprove your own assertions?
Also I have no interest in convincing you for it's own sake. I'm interested in developing actual, physical texts (and somehow have come up with two ideas during this thread, which is good) and my discussion has been a means to that end. If your interested in that, I'll continue, otherwise I wont even if you will go on to think that that's somehow admitting you were right all along.
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